At long last, I can buy marijuana, legally, here in California. I don’t need a note from my doctor, and I don’t have to pretend to be sick. I can walk into a store, admire their selection of fine cannabis products, and if I have enough money, and I can prove that I’m over 21 years of age, I can buy my choice of them, without having to look over my shoulder to see if there’s a cop around. I’ve waited a really long time for this. I’ve been dreaming of this day since 1978, and working for it since 1988, but I guess I’ll have to wait a few more days.

I had hoped that I would not have to drive far to visit one of these new recreational cannabis retailers on January 1st. People around here like to call Southern Humboldt County “the Heart of the Emerald Triangle,” but unfortunately, the two venders seeking retail recreational cannabis licenses in Southern Humboldt are still not quite open for business. When I inquired of the Humboldt County Cannabis Chamber of Commerce as to where I could find the nearest recreational cannabis retailer in my area, they refered me to a list compiled by Leafly.com, listing all of the cannabis retailers in the state that have registered with them to be open on January 1st.

I only found one retailer on that list in Humboldt County, EcoCann in Oldtown Eureka. I had never heard of them before, but a couple of days later, I found their circular in the North Coast Journal, offering preroll joints for one dollar, one per customer, with coupon. It’s about 80 miles from our place in Ettersburg to Oldtown, a long way to drive, and a lot of money in gas for a one dollar joint, especially considering that all of my friends and neighbors have tons of weed, and I can hardly go to town without someone giving a wad of buds for free.

Still, I want to buy weed, legally, in a licensed store. Well, not exactly weed, but I want to buy some cannabis products. I have weed. Everyone I know has weed. If I was out of weed, I would buy weed in the store. Hell, if I was out of weed, I would’ve driven to the store on New Years Eve and camped out overnight so that I could be their first customer on New Year’s Day, but I’ve got plenty of weed, so it can wait a few more days until we need to make a trip up North.

On Jan 5, I have an appointment in Trinidad to record a couple of segments for my KMUD radio show: Monday Morning Magazine. I think I’ll visit the dispensary then, and turn my visit to EcoCann into a segment as well. Celebrating legal cannabis will be the cover story of the show, which will air on KMUD (streaming and archived at www.kmud.org) on January 8, from 7-9am, about the time this post drops on LoCO. We will talk a lot about this new world we call legalization with a live panel of local entrepreneurs who have set sail to discover it, including Graham Shaw, Holly Carter, Kevin Jodrey and Lelehnia Dubois.

I’m really excited about this. I feel like a kid anticipating his first trip to the candy store. It’s been years since I had a medical recommendation, and when I did go to the trouble of getting a medical recommendation, it was only because I had shitloads of weed, and felt I needed the legal protection. Once, at Wonderland Nursery in Redway, I used my medical marijuana card to buy a bottle of Golden Dragon Medicinal Syrup for my mom, who has Parkinson’s disease, but other than that, I’ve never shopped for cannabis at a dispensary before.

The circular from EcoCann tells me they have quite a few strains of fresh cannabis flower for sale, and the pictures of the buds look pretty nice, but I’ve got plenty of flowers. Right now, I’m more interested in some of the new, value added, cannabis products that you only find at a a legal dispensary. Last year, I sent my mother a box of chocolates from the Humboldt Chocolate Company behind the gazebo in Oldtown. My mother, naturally, assumed that anything that had “Humboldt” in the name, must be infused with cannabis, and that’s what she told her friends, when she shared those, very delicious, but non-medicated, truffles with them. Of course, they all thought they got high from them. I would like to give my mother some chocolates that really will get her and her friends high, and I’ll bet they have them at EcoCann.

For myself, I’d like to find a way to ingest cannabis that doesn’t harsh my vocal chords as much as smoking, and that doesn’t involve sugar, and I’m sure my girlfriend would appreciate it if I didn’t stink the house up with smoke so much. I might want to try a vape pen, and I’ve heard great things about a cannabis throat spray.

I still find it hard to believe that I no longer have to feel paranoid about carrying weed (but I probably will, for the rest of my life), and I can go to a licensed store to buy it, even if it takes two hours to get there. So much has changed in forty rears, mostly for the worst, but this change is long overdue. Really, it’s about time.

Next month, recreational cannabis becomes legal in California, and Californians will no longer have to pretend to be sick to legally grow their own weed, or shop at a dispensary. That’s going to be a big day, and I intend to celebrate it. Here in Humboldt County, where we so desperately want to be recognized as the cannabis capital of the world, I think we should do our best to pretend like we’re happy about it too.

We need to think about how it looks to cannabis consumers when we grumble about legalization. Grumbling about legalization tells consumers that we wish they still had to pay Drug War prices for weed, and that we don’t give a fuck how many of them have to go to jail to make it happen. That’s not really the image we want to project to the newly liberated cannabis consumers of California. Instead, we need to treat cannabis legalization as a momentous occasion. Despite the terrible job they did of it all, this really is a giant step forward towards complete legalization at the federal level.

If we, here in Humboldt County, want to compete in the legal market, claim a strong market share, we need bright shining happy faces eager to serve an empowered customer with many new choices. The days of sitting tight and acting cool are over. You need to get consumers’ attention. You need to show them that you have something more to offer, and that you will go the extra mile for them. It’s a brand new ballgame, and we need to play ball.

I don’t think people will come here just to see a pot farm, though. Nobody goes to Iowa to watch corn grow, even though we all love popcorn. I think we should learn a lesson from Anheiser-Busch. They recognized that a brewery, by itself, only attracts beer-drinkers, but if you throw in a sky-ride, a water-slide, and a talking parrot show, you’ve got entertainment for the whole family and you’ve created a magical situation that allows dad to spend quality time with the family and get plowed all at the same time. And so, Busch Garden’s the world’s first beer themed family theme park was born, and eventually grew into one of Florida’s major tourist attractions.

I think we need something like that, here in Humboldt County, for weed. Call it Ganjaland, or Weed-World, or Marijuanaville. Put in a sky-ride where the gondolas look like CAMP helicopters, and we can have the only water-slide in America with live salmon in it. We could have a scary roller-coaster called “The Headrush” and if we got all of our local Samba bands, belly-dancers and burlesque troops involved we’d have more than enough entertainment. Throw in some virtual reality games and hypnotic psychedelic light shows, and you’ve got something that will bring families from around the globe.

Of course, you’d need lots of music. What would weed be without music? What would music be without weed? We could divide the park into little theme villages depending on what kind of music you would hear there. For instance, you might go to “Da Hood” to hear hip-hop and rap, or “The Ranch” for C+W, maybe “Trenchtown” for Reggae or “Dead Phish Lake” for all of the jam-bands. Each theme village would have it’s own attractions, as well as food vendors and cannabis specialties.

You could sell jerk chicken on a stick, coconut with lime, and fat spliffs of ganja in “Trenchtown.” You could enjoy burgers and fries, and longneck Coors and Budweisers, with a big chaw of cannabis dip between your cheek and gum at The Rance. In “Da Hood” we’d have blunts, 40s and mac n cheese, and at Dead Phish lake you can get sushi, or a veggie burrito to go with your microbrew, while you poke a kind nug into the bowl of your favorite piece of art glass.

In Tommorowland, all you’ll hear are the anguished wails of future generations, so no one wants to go there. Instead, we’ll have “Yesterdayland,” where you can’t take your phone, and park employees, dressed as NYPD cops usher you into a carriage that looks like the backseat of a squad car, for a ride that simulates the trip to Rikers Island. When you finally get off of that ride, more park employees, dressed as your parents, smoking cigarettes and sipping cocktails, will tell you how disappointed they are in you, and men in lab coats will chase you around asking you to pee in a cup.

Probably nobody really wants to go to Yesterdayland either, so let’s just keep it all in the here and now, and celebrate this milestone for what it is, a tidal shift in the War on Drugs. Things will never be the same again. This is the beginning of a whole new world of opportunity for anyone with the imagination and drive to challenge the unknown, but it is also the end of an era.

The War on Drugs is like the Vietnam War in that way. Some people made a lot of money off of it, a lot of people lost their lives in it, but all of us were affected by it. Even though that era was a dark stain on our history, a lot of people will miss it, and many people will have trouble adjusting to life without it. For now, let’s try to see it from the cannabis consumer’s point of view. Monday, January 1st is beautiful new day. It is a day to stand tall and breathe free, so let’s all stand tall, breathe free, and celebrate the freedom to enjoy our favorite herb, on our own terms, for our own reasons, legally, for the first time in 80 years. It’s really about time.

We’ve done pretty well, here in Humboldt County, at keeping the big chain stores at bay. Arcata has an ordinance against them, and public outcry keeps Walmart cowering in the back of the mall. Obviously we value our local culture, and our local economy. However, our State Senator, Mike McGuire has gone ahead and invited a new big chain store to open a franchise here in Humboldt County, and he expects us to be happy about it.

At a recent “Opioid Crisis” themed town meeting, Senator McGuire announced that Aegis Treatment Centers would be opening its 32nd drug treatment clinic here in Humboldt County. Clearly we need more drug treatment here in Humboldt County, but do we really need the “Taco Bell” of treatment centers? Has Aegis been offered incentives to locate here in Humboldt County? Were those incentives also offered to the Open Door Clinic who has been treating everyone’s medical needs here for decades? What about our local health care districts, or Redwoods Rural Health Center? Were they offered incentives to offer drug treatment locally? Do we need a big company from out of town to suck money out of our community, just so we can have a methadone clinic in Humboldt County?

If you think I’m kidding about the “Taco Bell of treatment centers,” you should look into Aegis for yourself. Aegis pays low wages, overworks it’s staff, and has a very high turnover rate. The employee reviews of the company that I read shared a few common themes. Nearly everyone complained of the low pay, many mentioned the high case load, and most complained about the lack of opportunity for advancement. Even employees who rated Aegis highly, said that it was “a good place to start,” but not a good place to work long-term.

Patients complain of inflexibility, impersonal, constantly changing staff, and many complain that Aegis likes to keep people on Methadone, because it’s more profitable to maintain someone on methadone than it is to help them quit opiates altogether. We’ve been treating narcotic addiction with methadone for decades, but it has never worked very well. I’m not sure we’ve ever had an outpatient methadone clinic in Humboldt County before, but couldn’t we do this better ourselves?

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Dr Amanda Reiman, who lives in Mendocino County, for my radio show, Monday Morning Magazine on KMUD (Nov 13, 8-9am archived at http://www.kmud.org). Dr Reiman has done some very interesting research into the therapeutic benefits of cannabis within the harm reduction drug treatment model. Dr Reiman has found that cannabis helps people quit hard drugs, and cannabis helps people who use hard drugs, use less hard drugs. This is a significant breakthrough in addiction treatment, and here in Humboldt County, we should be on the cutting edge of cannabis aided addiction treatment research. That sure won’t happen at an Aegis methadone clinic.

Dr Reiman works with a treatment clinic in southern California called “High Sobriety,” which uses cannabis alongside other forms of treatment. Why shouldn’t we have our own, homegrown, cannabis enhanced, drug treatment clinic here in Humboldt County? We need more and better drug treatment here in Humboldt County. We have plenty of people who need help. We have plenty of cannabis, and we have the peace, quiet and serenity that people need to heal.

We have an epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths here in Humboldt County that we must address, and if there’s one thing we should know by now, it is that we will never arrest and jail our way out of this problem. The people who are addicted to drugs in Humboldt County are our neighbors, our friends, and our kids. We don’t need to give them criminal records, and we don’t need to farm them out to some assembly line methadone clinic for the rest of their lives.

We have a unique population, and a unique set of circumstances here in Humboldt County, and I think we need a unique, homegrown approach to drug treatment. Research into the therapeutic potential for cannabis in drug treatment should be a high priority because we desperately need more and better drug treatment options. We need every tool in the toolbox to help the people of our community recover from the War on Drugs.

If there is one thing we can learn from Aegis, that is, that there is money to be made in drug treatment here in Humboldt County. Besides that, you can bet that people who use cannabis to quit hard drugs, will find that cannabis helps them stay clean, too, and people who used Humboldt Cannabis to get clean will probably use Humboldt Cannabis to stay clean. The potential for brand loyalty is enormous. This idea will make people rich. You’re welcome.

What a difference a couple of years can make. Suddenly, SoHum seems to be sinking. The Mateel is broke. KMUD is on the brink, and the business district in Garberville has a hockey player’s smile. No one has moved into Paul’s bookstore since he got evicted. No one has moved into the previous location of Paul and Kathy’s bookstore, in Redway, since their previous eviction almost a decade ago, but getting back to Garberville. The restaurant at the North end of town seems to be the latest gap in our grill. The House of Burgess Restaurant is now closed, and empty. Across the street, the ice cream shop, Treats, has been closed for a couple of years now. The big theater next to it hasn’t shown a movie since 2016. Across the street again, the bank in the next block of Redwood Drive is closed, and everyone else seems like they’re just barely hanging on.

The Chamber of Commerce keeps organizing street parties, and they’ve made feeble attempts to revive Arts Alive, but Garberville’s illicit sparkle is gone. The bling, has blung, leaving just another poor small rural town with a big drug problem. Weed has lost it’s intrigue, along with it’s profit margin, reducing the whole sexy outlaw industry into little more than hard, boring, farm work that barely pays the bills. Say goodbye to the Napa County of fine marijuana, and say hello to the new Southern Ohio of the West Coast.

The easy money is gone, and growing marijuana gets closer to honest farm work every day, and honestly, honest farm work sucks. I’ve done it. I respect the people who do it, but I hope I never have to do it again. I’m not a farm guy. I don’t mind growing my own weed, so I can get high while I do my thing, but my thing is not farming.

I think that if we, here in this community, can be honest with ourselves, most of us will realize that we are not farm people. The people who I met when I first moved here, were not farmers. They grew pot, but they also painted, made pottery, played music and made art. They didn’t move here with a burning desire to grow the very best marijuana in the world, and a shitload of it. They moved here to get away from the rat race. They grew cannabis to pay their bills, and to buy time to pursue what they loved, be it quality time in nature, their propensity for other drugs, or their own art, music or craft. They called it “The Cannabis Grant.”

I’m sure that some of the people who grow cannabis around here, do it because they love growing weed, and they never get tired of it, because growing weed is what they were born to do. That’s not most of us though. Most of us were looking for a way to avoid long hours of hard work. Growing marijuana was a way of stealing your life back from the man. People grew marijuana so that they could enjoy a comfortable lifestyle without selling themselves into corporate slavery. Growing pot was stressful, and it wasn’t easy, but it didn’t consume your whole life.

Today, most people in the business are working themselves to death on a non-stop light-dep treadmill to hell. The artists and writers and oddball misfits who grew marijuana to buy some autonomy and freedom are getting squeezed, and for people in the industry, growing marijuana is rapidly becoming just another shitty job. This is not the time to let your talents and your dreams languish while you toil away your life in Humboldt’s ganja fields. Get out while you can. You have better things to do.

Don’t measure your success in dollars, because dollars mean nothing. Measure your success in happiness; measure it in time spent doing what you love. Whether it’s playing the guitar, talking with friends, painting, hunting, fishing, gardening, working on cars, writing, partying or fucking, nothing you can buy will ever make up for what you lose by giving up what you love. When you deny your own talents and proclivities that way, you rob the world of your creativity, which makes the whole human experience that much less interesting.

When a lot of people deny themselves what they love, for an irresistible monetary incentive, it deadens the whole community, because people who deny themselves what they really love, for money, die inside. They die inside, and they become resentful of anyone who has the courage to live their dream and do what they love. This community resentment gets translated into words and actions that beat people down spiritually. Here in SoHum, we find ourselves caught in a spiral, where the lower the price of weed falls, the harder we work. The harder we work, the more resentful we become, and the more resentful we become, the more we beat each other down.

Our whole economy is built to beat people down, and to force them to abandon their dreams and sell themselves for money. Capitalism needs people who are dead inside, because people who are dead inside buy more crap, take more drugs, go to the doctor more often, and do what they are told. When you sell yourself for money, it’s like surrendering without a fight. It is the most debilitating kind of defeat, and no amount of financial success can mitigate that loss.

The strength, and future, of SoHum does not lie with the cannabis industry. The strength and future of SoHum lies with the many talented and creative people who are getting the life squeezed out of them in the cannabis industry, and are being beaten down spiritually by a resentful community. One of the things that makes cannabis so attractive is the creativity it can release in the user, but one of the worst things about the cannabis industry is all of the creativity it squashes with never-ending hard farm work.

As a community, we need to recognize that the cannabis industry will employ fewer people in the future, and a lot of those people will be low wage workers. Most of the honest jobs in our local economy pay low wages. If we can figure out how to create housing and establish businesses that cater to the needs of people with low wage jobs, and make life easier for people at the lower end of the pay scale, we can create an environment where people feel less pressure to stick with an unsatisfying job, and more freedom to try something different. The more we can do to help release the creativity that is already here, the faster we can build an attractive local culture and a vibrant, diverse and resilient local economy. Honestly, it’s about time.

When I drank beer, the Eel River Brewing Company made my favorite. Their Organic IPA had everything I was looking for in a beer. It’s strong, satisfyingly hoppy and all organic. I love the fact that they make it right here in Humboldt County, but a big part of what I love about Eel River Organic IPA, is the price. I used to get Eel River Organic IPA at Eureka Natural Foods, or the Liquor Store in Redway for $28.88 a case. Just last week I saw that they still have it at ENF at that same price. That works out to about $1.20 per 12 oz bottle, which seems like a bargain to me.

I bought a lot Eel River Organic IPA over the years, amounting to thousands of individual beers, and I never got a bad one. Every single bottle tasted consistently crisp and refreshing. People take this for granted with beer, but unless you’ve paid good money for a badly skunked and undrinkable beer you probably don’t fully appreciate it. I thank the Whale Gulch Brewery for making me really appreciate the quality control at Eel River Brewery.

Of course, I could have drunk Budweiser, for about half as much money, and found it available in even more convenient locations, or I could have chosen Hamms for even less, but I chose Eel River IPA because I don’t mind paying a bit more for real quality. I don’t have extravagant tastes. I never bought their Imperial IPA at something approaching $10 a bottle. After all, I’m not made of money, and beer isn’t everything, but I like a good one, and I appreciate it when someone can make a good one at a good price, so I don’t mind giving them this entirely unsolicited publicity.

Look at what goes into an Eel River Organic IPA. First you need organic barley. The field has to be certified organic. The farmer has to plant it, water it, fertilize it, protect it from pests, harvest it, hull it and cure it, and make money at it. From there, the barley has to be sprouted, and roasted at a very specific temperature for a very specific amount of time. In addition to barley, you need hops, an aromatic flower, not unlike cannabis. The hops have to be grown in a certified organic field, watered, fertilized, protected from pests and picked at peak florescence. Hops also have to be cured and dried properly.

Besides the ag products, you need an abundant supply of clean water, and you need to deal with a lot of organic waste material properly. You need a specific strain of yeast. You need someplace to boil it all together, and you need the fuel to make the heat. You need a sterilized fermenter with an air-lock, big enough to hold it all, and you need to keep it within a narrow temperature range for a matter of weeks. Then you need to bottle it, with just a dash of sugar in each bottle, for sparkle, cap it, and let it age for a few more weeks, before you sell it to the distributor.

The distributor buys it, tacks on all of the taxes, then takes it to the store, and sells it to the store owner, at a profit. The store buys it, and marks it up again, before they sell it to me, at $28.88 a case. I’m happy, and everybody gets paid. Nobody makes too much, but everyone makes enough to keep doing it. That’s what makes Eel River Organic IPA a success. It’s quality, but it isn’t just quality. It’s quality, done efficiently. It’s honest value that makes Eel River Organic IPA such a great beer.

Now let’s compare this great local beer to our even more famous local product, marijuana. To make marijuana, you need to plant it, water it, fertilize it, harvest it, dry it and cure it. In the past, you also had to hide it. Time was, we had the best place in the country to hide marijuana, and there was so much of a premium on cannabis because of prohibition, that it was worth the expense of dragging everything else you needed to grow marijuana, including the topsoil, fertilizer and even the sunlight, in the form of generators and lights, out to the middle of the forest in Humboldt County to do it.

No one would dream of hauling soil up the side of a mountain to a hole in the forest to plant barley. If they did, that would be some expensive barley, and unless they could think of some kind of hype to convince people that the barley they grew was better than barley grown by competent farmers, working fertile soil, on flat land, in full sun, out in the open, they would soon go out of business. Unless they could lobby the legislature to create all kinds of strict licensing of barley. They could argue that since barley is used to produce beer, which is responsible for millions of deaths every year, of course we need to strictly limit where, and how much of it can be grown They could use their influence in government to create an artificial shortage of barley that would drive the price of beer through the roof, and allow them to sell their expensive barley at a profit.

Right now, the marijuana industry is conspiring with politicians to keep marijuana expensive and to stifle competition and prevent innovation. The cannabis industry has given more money to gubernatorial candidates than all other farmers in the state combined, and most of that money went to Gavin Newsom who has promised to keep the price of marijuana high, to protect drug dealer’s profits, while he screws cannabis consumers who are sick of high prices, and communities all over the state who will have to deal with black market crime for the foreseeable future.

‘Our business corrupt? What gives you that idea?’

That’s not a bargain; that’s a ripoff. There’s no honest value anywhere in the marijuana industry. Instead, it’s full of hype, greed, and government coercion. If you happen to get good pot out of it, that is more or less beside the point. You didn’t really have much of a choice. You paid through the nose to people who feel entitled to your money, and you settled for whatever you got. We deserve a better deal.

A better deal means open competition that rewards innovation. A better deal means licensing large-scale cannabis grows on agricultural land to stop people from hauling soil up the side of a mountain to a hole in the forest, by putting them out of business. A better deal means we have a choice of fine cannabis products, in every price range, that are safe, consistent and reliable. Until we have a better deal, we don’t even know what an honest bargain looks like in the marijuana industry.

Someday, if we ever get a better deal, some Humboldt cannabis entrepreneur may develop a profitable cannabis product that matches the honest value of Eel River Brewery’s Organic IPA, but I sure haven’t seen it yet.

I picked up the latest issue of The Emerald because I saw that it was labeled, “The Art Issue.” I usually don’t bother with The Emerald, because there’s so little to it besides ads for weed, next to superfluous hype about the advertised weed. I love weed, but all by itself, it’s really boring. I don’t want to look at pictures of weed any more than I want to look at pictures of aspirin tablets when I have a headache, but hey, if they are covering our local art scene, even with a weedy theme, I’ll take a look.

I should have known better, just by looking at the cover. The antique cut glass vase-turned-bong barely rises to the level of craft. There’s no art there at all. The same goes for all of the cannabis products horribly mislabeled as “art” in the magazine. I don’t care how much pride you take in your product, a bud of cannabis or a blob of oil is not a work of art, no matter how many layers of excessive packaging you wrap around it.

Packaging an 8th of an ounce of weed in a fancy jewelry box with the name of your company in gold letters and charging $55 dollars for it doesn’t make you an artist; it makes you a douchebag. I don’t pay that kind of bread for weed unless the grower and the distributor both face mandatory 5 year minimum prison sentences for the crime, because they fucking deserve it.

It’s just pot. It’s not an engagement ring. You will incinerate the product, in a matter of days, if not hours. You don’t need a fancy box to keep it for posterity. If you buy this thing, you’ll smoke the weed, but then you’ll have this stupid box that you didn’t want, with someone else’s name on it, which you will then feel responsible for. You’ll hesitate to throw it away, because it’s such a needless waste, so it will sit there, on your table, reminding you of the time you spent $55 for a nickle bag of weed. You’ll never find anything else to do with it, except put more weed into it, so congratulations, you just bought the cheesiest $50 nug-jug on the planet.

A joint does not count as a work of art either. Putting a joint inside of a plastic tube with a plastic stopper does not make it work of art, and putting three of them in a colorful box doesn’t make anything but a shameful pile of garbage that stands as a monument to the so-called “artist’s” complete lack of respect for the natural world.

“You know, I sure do like this marijuana stuff, but I just wish it came wrapped in a lot more useless non-biodegradable packaging.” said no marijuana consumer, ever.

If the pot in those joints doesn’t get you high enough that you become filled with regret for your role in trashing the planet with all of that packaging, it must not be very good pot. Then again, if you don’t already feel like a sucker for spending $20 for three joints, your brain might not function well enough to get that high. Either way, I stopped picking up The Emerald because of exactly this kind of stupidity.

Calling these insults to nature “art” demeans the term and insults artists everywhere. It reveals just how crass and myopic the drug dealers who make up this industry really are. There is no level of hyperbole that is off-limits to them in their ongoing quest to glorify themselves and their product while continuing to rip off cannabis consumers. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the same magazine reviewed a strain of weed called “BC God Bud.” I love weed, but I don’t worship it.

I know that dope yuppies have a grossly inflated view of themselves and their product, just from living around here and talking to them, but seeing this kind of BS translated into ridiculous products with even more ridiculous advertising copy just nauseates me. Thankfully, I’ve got medicine for that.

I live on the dark side of the hill, on dry land, here in SoHum. That’s why I can afford to live here. We don’t have enough sun or water to grow weed, and we’re off the grid, so no greenrushers are clamoring for our place, but we love it here. We enjoy the shade in the summertime and we’re protected from the worst of the storm winds in Winter. It’s a nice place to live, but not for growing weed, so I don’t bother.

Humboldt County is probably the easiest place in the whole US to find weed. Practically everyone else around here grows way more than they need. You can smell it everywhere, and hardly a hubcap falls off of a truck around here without revealing a secret garden or stash of weed hidden behind it. I nearly tripped over half-a-dozen recently harvested plants in grow-bags, just yesterday, on the sidewalk in front of Ray’s in Redway. God knows how they got there.

Around here, cannabis usually finds me before I have to go looking for it. I’ve been paid for work in cannabis, traded art for cannabis, received cannabis as a bonus for a job well done and I’ve been gifted cannabis, but on occasion, I have had to buy cannabis, for my own consumption, here in Humboldt County. I thought I was approaching one of those times recently, when I found myself in a conversation with a couple of local land owners.

If you read this column regularly, you know that I don’t give land owners much reason to like me, and they both admitted that they don’t agree with everything I say in this column. One of them was explaining to me why he thought the black market really isn’t so bad. “It’s just friends helping friends” he told me. “Besides,” he continued, “No one around here spends money to buy weed because everyone’s got so much.”

I had to differ with him on that point. I told him that I occasionally buy weed, and that I was looking to buy some weed right now. He looked at me with a look of genuine concern, “Really, you’re out of weed?” he asked.

“Just about.” I told him.

“I’ve got a jar of weed in the car I can let you have.” He said, adding, “No one around here should have to pay for medicine.”

I accepted his generous offer, and conceded the point. Both of these gentlemen seemed genuinely concerned that I, or anyone, should have to do without cannabis. I thanked him for the gift. It warmed the cockles of my heart, and got me nicely stoned. I really appreciate it. I don’t mean to diminish this magnanimous gesture in any way. After all, it was his compassion, his weed, and his idea to give it to me, despite the fact that I have probably offended him many times with this column, but there’s something about this sentiment that, I think, every cannabis enthusiast understands.

There is something about the spirit of cannabis that wants to be shared, freely. Once cannabis comes into your life, you begin to understand why it is so important to people, and she encourages you to share. Cannabis is everyone’s best friend, and it just seems cruel to deny her to anyone, or even to ask for money for her. That’s just how she makes you feel. Even when pot sold for $400 an ounce, people shared their weed. We started passing the bong around instead of joints, but we still shared. In my whole life, I’ve only been offered a line of cocaine, once, but thousands of people have shared cannabis with me.

Here’s another example: I have another friend, who I really enjoy talking to. He has no home, no car, no phone and barely gets enough to eat most days. He doesn’t read this column because he has no internet access. He also expressed concerned that I might run out of weed, and has given me weed many times. It’s always excellent weed. He never asks for money for it, and always gives it with the same look of genuine compassion and concern, and with the same words, “No one should have to go without medicine, especially around here.”

That’s real class. When someone can endure that level of poverty and yet maintain enough humanity to be sympathetic and generous to others. That’s real class. It’s also classy to be generous and compassionate to people you don’t necessarily agree with, or even know that well, as was the case with the land owners I spoke of earlier. It speaks well of people around here, and it speaks well of cannabis, so I think we should celebrate that spirit of generosity that cannabis exudes.

This generous, magnanimous spirit of cannabis, inspired me to start working for legalization back in the 80s. No one, anywhere, should have to go without medicine, and if it weren’t for prohibition, no one would. That’s the message I got from cannabis, along with a vision of a world where cannabis was freely available to everyone, and cheaper than alcohol. It looked like the kind of world I wanted to live in, and that vision motivated me to work to end prohibition. Even though we haven’t quite realized that goal, it’s great to see the generous spirit of cannabis in action, in my community, and to be the beneficiary of it.

On the other hand, that’s why I find it so offensive to see dispensaries that look like banks or high-end jewelry stores, or cannabis companies that rely on snob appeal to justify high prices. Every attempt to market cannabis as an expensive luxury for the well-to-do, flies in the face of the spirit of cannabis herself. Instead of making cannabis classy, they make her into a whore, to profit from the love she gives so freely. There’s nothing “classy” about that at all. It’s just ugly and shameful.

What People Say:

If you haven't read john hardin's blog before, prepare to be shocked. I always am. (I can't help but enjoy it though...at least when I'm not slapping my hands on my computer desk and yelling at him.) He's sort of a local Jon Stewart only his writing hurts more because it is so close to people and places I love. Kym Kemp
...about, On The Money, The Collapsing Middle Class
... I think he really nails it, the middle class is devolving back into the working class. Pretty brilliant, IMO. Juliet Buck, Vermont Commons http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/middle-class-or-first-world-subsistence
BLOGS WE WATCH: John Hardin’s humorous, inappropriate, and sometimes antisocial SoHum blog is a one-of-a-kind feast or famine breadline banquet telling it like it is—or at least how it is through Mr. Hardin’s uniquely original point of view with some off-the-wall poetic licensing and colorful pics tossed in for good measure. For example, how it all went from this to that and how it all came about like the hokey pokey with your right foot out. You get the idea. Caution: this isn’t for everybody, especially those without a bawdy, bawdry, and tacky sense of humor. You know who you are. We liked it. (From the Humboldt Sentinel http://humboldtsentinel.com/2011/12/16/weekly-roundup-for-december-16-2011/)